`Great Performances` Highlights Olivier

October 25, 1985|By Bill Kelley, Staff writer

Tonight, Great Performances centers on a great performer: Laurence Olivier, who is profiled in Laurence Olivier -- A Life (WPBT-Ch. 2 and WXEL-Ch. 42, 9 p.m.). The British production, which includes an interview with Lord Olivier and clips from such films as Fire Over England (in which he co-starred with his future wife, Vivien Leigh), Henry V, Hamlet, Othello and Wuthering Heights, is exhaustively researched and broken into two parts. Part 1 ends in 1944; Part 2, which airs next week, starts in 1945. You can skip the closing minutes -- an American epilogue in which actors such as John Lithgow and Jessica Tandy tell what Lord Olivier means to them -- and miss nothing.